Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 2/3

03Jul

Dan Rather, writing for the Huffington Post, said, “The girls, sometimes as young as 12, often 13-16, are lured by a ‘front man’ in his mid-to-late teens. He becomes her ‘boyfriend,’ taking her to dinner, buying her nice things, sometimes meeting her parents. The girl eventually moves in with him. Then he says they need money to continue being together. First, she’s enticed to sleep with his friends to pay the rent. Soon she’s turning tricks for what police say is an endless supply of older men willing to pay top money for sex with very young girls. … There is, and has been for a long time, a national ‘War on Drugs.'”

However, Rather says, “There isn’t one (a war) on child prostitution and what amounts to a slave trade. Only feeble efforts at best.”

That causes me to question how many of our political leaders and wealthy Americans take advantage of this form of slavery in the United States.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center reports, “An estimated 12 – 27 million people are caught in one or another form of slavery. Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States. Nearly three out of every four victims are women. Half of modern-day slaves are children.”

In fact, KUHF.fm (88.7) reported, “Houston has a huge commercial sex industry and there’s some quotes that say that there’s more SOBs, which is sexually-oriented businesses, in Houston per square mile than there are in Las Vegas. … According to the Department of Justice, Houston is one of the most intense human trafficking regions in the country, with one out of five trafficked persons passing through this city.”

What does this say about the GOP (Republican Party)? Texas has been a Republican stronghold since the mid-1970s.

This horrible crime is not new—it is as old as civilization as we know it. However, America’s hot button political issues focus on abortion, illegal immigration, the Iraq War, pay as you go budgeting, tax cuts and supply side economics, teachers’ unions and public education, the value (or lack of value) of college education, and universal healthcare while ignoring slavery. It seems that no one with a high-profile public image has stepped up to focus on this issue that is all but ignored—until now, and she has been both criticized and praised publicly for doing it.

My next question—Why would anyone criticize Jada Pinkett Smith, the mother of Willow Smith and wife of Will Smith, for producing a video about modern human trafficking and/or slavery unless the critic benefits from that slave trade?